Feeling Guilty About Not Getting Better Quicker

[Miaoqing]

Hello everyone,

Lately, I've been feeling really guilty about not getting better quicker. I've been diagnosed since April and I feel like I should have made some sort of improvement by now, but it doesn't seem like I have. Whenever I talk to my therapist or psychiatrist, I get the feeling that she's exhausted by my lack of progress, though I admit this is probably just me projecting. I feel guilty talking to my family and friends about it as well for mainly the same reason. I just feel like I should have gotten at least a little better by now, but my progress seems stunted somehow.

Do you guys share any similar guilt? How do you manage it? Any advice would be much appreciated! xx

 

[desiderata310]

Take the bull by the horns. ASK.

Talk to your therapist directly about what you are doing outside of therapy, how you feel about your progress and how you feel about the unspoken feedback you're getting from her/him.
ASK how long you're actually looking at being in therapy.

It's taken me a while to understand that I am probably going to be there for... a while and that I wasn't stopping in for a few sessions.

How do I manage it? I bust out with "I don't feel like I'm getting anywhere and I sincerely feel like you're frustrated with me. What am I doing wrong?" Turns out what I was feeling with my therapist was correct but it's origins was wrong: he was frustrated with the fact that he was floundering with me- not frustrated with me.

 

[Friday]

Do you guys share any similar guilt? How do you manage it?

Yep.

The time is going to pass no matter what. What do I want at the end of it? Keep working for that.

I was originally working to try and keep this tailspin from stretching out into another 5 years in the PTSD badlands, about 1 year into it. At 3 years I started to get nervous. WTF??? What am I doin wrong? Aaaaaargh. At this point? I'm already 5 years in. And nowhere near where I want to be. My expectations are out the damn window at this point. So where I'm at, at present, is; the time is going to pass no matter what. So what do I want at the end of it? Keep working for that.

Kind of like "I'm too old for school! I'm already 25/35/45 whatever." But school takes 4 years. So start school at 25/35/45 and have a degree in 4 years. Or don't have a degree at 4 years. Either way, I'll still be 29/39/49. Time passes. It's just what it does. So I keep working for what I want. f*ck time. I'm going for results.

 

[One step at a time]

I agree that talking with T is the best way.

When I brought up feeling like I am back in the same (bad) place as nine months ago, T said, "Yes, and when you have a flashback, you feel like you are in the same place, but you are not."
And then she pointed out some evidence that I had made (painful, but useful) progress.

I wish healing would happen more quickly, and I wish it would be a linear progression from less functional to more functional. But that isn't the way it is working for me. As I get better, my brain decides I can handle more, so I get punched in the metaphorical gut with some new combination of information or feelings that I then have to process in order to become functional again. So externally, it still looks like I am out of commission for at least 1 of every 3 weeks, but internally, I know that things are changing. I am getting better.

 

[EveHarrington]

IME it can take years before one can actually reflect and believe they've made progress.

 

[Lionheart]

I sometimes feel a little guilty for having PTSD symptoms so many years, (decades in fact), after it first began but, I have made lots of progress and continue to press on.

What I have found is that the quickest way to move along is to just accept wherever I am on my healing journey as being good enough.....that seems to speed things along a bit more and helps me to not feel "stuck".

What I know is, that sometimes things go slow and other times they move right along....I think that is just the natural course of things and we really don't need anything extra to feel guilty or bad about.

Learning to accept ourselves as we are is a process and that includes the pace of healing.